For decades, Moscow’s annual May 9 parade has been not so much a memorial to victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, as a carefully choreographed show of might and power. Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the Kremlin has intensified attacks on Ukraine ahead of Victory Day to help its propaganda efforts — seeking to give Putin something to boast about in his annual speech on Red Square.
This year, Russia’s forces were ordered to capture Ukraine’s strategic city of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region ahead of May 9. While they have yet to succeed in that task, the Russians have taken advantage of Ukraine’s shortage of weapons and troop exhaustion to rapidly gain territory, taking control of several small villages in the Donetsk region.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said Wednesday’s attacks were aimed mainly at civilian energy infrastructure, targeting power generation and electricity transmission facilities in the Poltava, Kirovohrad, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Vinnytsia regions.
“The enemy wants to deprive us of the ability to sufficiently generate and transmit electricity,” Galushchenko said, urging Ukrainians to limit energy use, especially during the morning and evening peak periods. “This is the contribution of each of us to victory. Light will prevail,” the minister added.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK reported the attacks had seriously damaged equipment at three of its power plants overnight. “This is already the fifth massive shelling of the company’s energy facilities in the last month and a half,” the company said in a statement.
